


Tales from the Squigglyverse

by quietprofanity



Series: Yin, Yang and Squiggly Universe [4]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dubious Consent, Futanari, Mpreg, Multi, Sexual Harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:13:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietprofanity/pseuds/quietprofanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Omegaverse AU. Short stories from the Four Nations and Republic City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pursuit (Zuko/Katara)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my friend PilgrimKitty and well aware that my progression on "A More Enlightened World" has been held up for personal reasons and other commitments, I asked my followers on Tumblr if they wanted to make a request for a drabble in my Omegaverse universe. Guidelines were they could prompt any character or pairing so long as it wasn't a character that we knew existed but haven't fully met yet. (So no Kya II, Bumi II, "Honora" or Korra's Northern Water Tribe family.) The responses were great, and given that I'm the long-winded type, the drabbles turned out to be more like "short stories of less than 1,000 words."
> 
> They are now posted in their internal chronological order, rather than the order in which they were prompted, with new titles and small edits. Most are rated a hard Gen or Teen, although the Sokka/Suki one has some smut.
> 
> The first story was prompted by Sandoz_Iscariot.

Zuko was prepared for this. He had counted down the days, then the weeks, in scratches on his bedpost, the smell of the Avatar and the Water Tribe peasant boy thick in his nose’s memory. Soon they’d be helpless, be his.

The crew had been on the sky bison’s trail for days, and on the day before what Zuko had predicted would be the Yin boys’ heats it had descended into a forest. Zuko was in that forest now, his eyes attuned to every broken branch, his nose flared to catch any Yin scent. He hunted alone. His Uncle had declined to come, had argued that to track the Avatar this way was unfair, but Zuko didn’t embark on this mission to be merciful.

At a small clearing, he found it: the Avatar’s scent. Picking up his pace, he followed the trail into the woods. Zuko couldn’t help but smile. The scent trail was the strongest it had ever been. With the Avatar’s ability to fly, his scent was often scattered across the ground one moment and the top of a tree the next. But now it seemed like a clear path. Zuko could hardly believe his luck.

Of course, he should have known better.

His joy had turned into a red rage when he saw her — rubbing her shoulders against a thick tree, the yellow and orange Air Nomad shirt over her blue Water Tribe dress. Katara’s head perked up like a deer-rabbit. Her wide blue eyes met his for less than a moment, and she ran.

“Stupid!” Zuko growled under his breath as he raced after her, his fury growing with every step. He’d come so close. She’d tricked him. She’d set her trap and he’d fallen right into it, the obnoxious little peasant!

Katara was swift, was persistent. The uneven forest floor never stalled her step, but he had the longer legs, slowly but surely gained on her.

One little mistake, Zuko thought, just one, and I’ll have her.

It was a root that was a bit too high that eventually got her. She tripped hard over it, tumbling in the dirt for a few feet before Zuko caught up to her. He fell upon her, pinned her hands to the ground above her head.

“Got you, you little witch,” Zuko sneered.

Katara stared back up at him, her lips trembling but her eyes defiant. This close, he could hear her heart racing, and he could smell her. In fact, Aang’s scent barely registered at this distance. The Yin part of her was afraid of him, and Zuko could taste her fear in the air, but the Yang part, the stronger part, told him to keep away, told him that she was ready to fight even if she wasn’t sure how.

It suddenly occurred to Zuko that he had no clear plan of what to do with her.

“I suppose your brother and the Avatar are somewhere in the opposite direction,” he finally said.

“Miles,” Katara snapped.

Her necklace glinted in the setting sun. Zuko ran his fingers along the ribbon about her neck, and Katara flinched. Zuko felt a burning low in his stomach, the flames of something he hadn’t felt in years.

“How long do you think this can last?” Zuko whispered in her ear. “An in-between like you protecting two Yins?”

“It’s working out well so far,” Katara said, and Zuko could tell she was trying to keep her voice steady.

Zuko bent down on his elbows, rested more of his body onto her and let her scent fill his nostrils.

“But wouldn’t it be nice,” he asked, a low hum in his voice, “to just give in.”

Katara arched underneath him, and Zuko could swear a stronger Yin scent filled the air. His world shrunk down to her neck. He lowered his lips to it.

A cat-owl’s screech split the quiet of the forest, and Zuko looked up for a split second. When he realized what had happened, Katara’s knee had already hit him hard in the stomach.

She slipped away, was already running. Zuko struggled to his feet, his hand clasped around his stomach. He rushed after her as she ran out between the trees, followed her to a clearing, to a bank of a fast-moving river.

“No!” Zuko yelled. He released a fire blast but it was too late. Katara dove beneath the water. He chased the rapids that followed her descent, but when her head surfaced above the churning foam, she was already far in the distance, was out of his reach.


	2. It's Not You, It's Me (Toph/Katara)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by norsegodshavemorefun.

The stamping reverberated throughout the house: hard, constant, occasionally punctuated by a growl-like shriek of frustration. Katara sat on a pillow on the furthest side of the room, struggling to concentrate on the book she was reading. If Katara were someone else, she would have told that person to be patient, to be understanding, to try to talk, but Katara had been patient, understanding, and had tried to talk to Toph for the last hour and a half.

Too frustrated to traipse around like hippo cow anymore, Toph plopped onto a pillow and screamed into it.

“Ugh!” Katara threw her book down and smacked her hands on either side of her head. “That’s it. I’m going outside. If you want to be like this for the next thirteen hours, I don’t have to listen to it.”

“Go on and leave!” Toph growled, waving one of her hands in the air. “I don’t care what you think. Nobody cares what I think. Nobody wants to tell me anything.”

That was completely ridiculous, but Katara had already said that. Nobody told Toph that Aang and Sokka were holed up at Ba Sing Se’s spa for Upper Ring Yins for their heats because there was no reason she needed to know, and she frankly should have expected it. She was disappointed over something that wasn’t going to happen anyway.

Katara sighed. “I’ll be back in a few hours. I’ll bring something nice home for dinner.”

“I’m not hungry!”

Katara rolled her eyes. “That’s not true,” she muttered.

Toph raised her head from the floor pillow, a glare on her face. “Better hungry than repressed like you.”

“Re-Repressed?” Katara fumed. “Why? Because I don’t sniff after every Yin that passes by like you?”

“No, because you do and like to pretend you don’t.”

Katara scoffed. She hated how she and Toph seemed so drawn to doing this, to attacking each other when they got frustrated rather than trying to work things out like adults. “I don’t need to listen to …”

“Oh Aang!” Toph grabbed a big hunk of the pillow with both of her arms. “You’re so sweet. I’ll be like your mom. Let me kiss you. Let me kiss you again. But we’re such good friends, right? Such good, good friends." Toph started kissing the pillow. "Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!”

“You’re crazy!” Katara said. Her cheeks were burning.

“Oh yeah?” Toph sat up on the knees on the pillow. “I think you like it that way, actually. You have such a complex about being an in-between, like nobody will ever love you or something. It’s so boring.”

Katara growled. “And you think that my brother would have let you mate him even though he’s shown no interest in you and THAT is so boring! Okay?”

Immediately after Katara said it, she felt bad.

Toph’s face fell. She slumped onto the pillow. Katara stood there awkwardly for a minute, then shuffled back to her seat, picked up her book.

“I got away from my parents so I wouldn’t have to follow the rules all the time.” Toph folded her hands under her chin, pointed her face toward Katara. “Don’t you ever want to break free? Try things?”

“I left my home too, you know.”

“Yeah, but I mean with other people.”

“Mating isn’t everything.”

Toph let out a deep sigh, blowing on her bangs at the end of it. “In-betweens.”

Katara stared at her book. The sentences weren’t making sense any more. “People get hurt with this stuff, Toph.” Katara heard Toph getting on her feet, but didn’t look up. “I think you’ll get it when you’re olde—.”

Katara felt her chin being lifted up, her lips meeting Toph’s. Her heart was beating in her ears. She liked kissing and she hadn’t been kissed, really, really kissed, in so very long.

Toph let her go, crossed her arms. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like that.”

Katara’s mouth dropped open. She swallowed. “I don’t want to do this with you Toph.”

“You don’t have to be my bondmate,” Toph said. Her voice had turned sad, almost desperate.

“I know,” Katara said. “I just … I just can’t.”

Toph hung her head. Katara felt so horrible, but also resentful. She hadn’t started the kiss.

“Look, Toph, you’re really pretty. You’re tough. You’re strong. You’re going to make a Yin really, really happy one day. It’s not you. It’s me.”

“I know,” Toph said, almost choking on the bitterness of the words.

Toph walked out the door, slamming it behind her. Katara held her face in her hands and tried not to cry.


	3. Like a Warrior (Suki/Sokka)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by PilgrimKitty.

Suki was a young woman of many talents. She was a skilled warrior, a born leader, and — Sokka was learning — she had superhuman control of herself.

“You want me to take you now?” Suki smiled down at Sokka as he writhed in her arms, naked with his back against her chest. “I don’t know … it’s a hard decision.”

“Suki!”

“This heat lasts about fifteen hours, right? Wouldn’t that be more work for me later?”

“C’mon,” Sokka begged, drawing out the word in a whine.

She’d been tormenting him this way for hours. As the heat came upon him, made his skin tight and warm and churned his insides, Suki had sat next to him, seemingly unmoved even though he knew he was starting to smell. Just when he thought he couldn’t take any more Suki had winked at him, kissed him on the cheek and said they should go to their tent. Sokka was glad the others were nowhere near them, because he let out the most embarrassing moan.

“Suki, please.”

“Wait, wait,” She placed her right hand gently about his neck, held him steady and rubbed her nose against him. With her left hand, Suki reached down to his groin, and with that she wasn’t gentle.

“Suki! Suki!” Sokka came quickly, moaning and shuddering in her grip. The sensation set his mind racing. It felt so good. He loved her so much. He couldn’t believe that what he’d wanted for so long was finally happening to him. And yet it wasn’t enough. He was still hard. There was still that ache inside him, that ever-present need to be mounted and bred.

“Hmm,” Suki said. Her voice still had that teasing lit, but it was sultrier, breathier. “I think I want one more from you.”

Sokka whimpered now. “Suki, I need more than this. I need you. I need you now. Please.”

Suki licked along his neck, tightened her grip around his sex. “One more, and I’ll be inside you.”

She had to clamp her hand over Sokka’s mouth as he screamed.

Sokka felt himself pushed forward, stood on his hands and knees. He could feel his face redden as he thought of himself wet and open like this but the feeling dissipated as Suki grabbed onto his hip and held him steady. He closed his eyes, content as she slid inside, gentle and soft like a woman at first, but soon hard and fast like a warrior, like a Yang.


	4. A Hand to Hold on To (Toph/Sokka)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by norsegodshavemorefun.

Toph first grew to recognize Sokka by his voice — sarcastic, shrill, usually loud — then by his scent — strong and alluring. She’d never admit it out loud, but it wasn’t too long before one became inseparable from the other.

Toph liked a lot of people. It was hard not to, especially when she’d first hit puberty and her already-strong sense of smell now made her want to run after strangers on the street. Although she could never fully push temptation away, her strength of mind and self-control eventually reigned her in (And who could picture her as a mother, anyway?).

But Sokka was different. As attractive as he smelled, Toph initially thought of the Water Tribe boy as something of a hanger-on, only there because his in-between sister appointed herself as protector for the Yin Avatar. It was as time went on that she grew to see him as a gentle voice to calm her in anger, a hand to hold onto in times of danger when her feet couldn’t see, and a special friend.

“It’s a little stupid,” Toph said to him once after she’d had a particularly bad spat with Katara.

“What is?”

“I should be the one helping you out.”

Sokka laughed. “You don’t do that with your earthbending?”

Toph wanted to explain that she did that for everybody, but thought that might be saying too much. So she made some joke about how he just thought so because all he did was make stupid jokes and eat weird things and get stuck in cracks in the ground …

“You know,” Sokka said, cutting her off. “We’re all supposed to help each other out. Yangs. Yins. Even Squigglies. Nobody here thinks you’re helpless.”

Toph had heard something like that before, but it wasn’t until now that she was starting to really understand it.

He didn’t love her, at least not the way she wanted. When Suki came to stay with the group for good, Sokka started to smell like her. The way Toph used to recognize him now reminded her at every moment that he was not hers.

And yet while he might have been out of her reach, he never left her. At her school in the mountains, in the streets of Republic City, he was often by her side with his bad jokes, his ridiculous posturing, and his utmost admiration for all her skills and strength, which was the best admiration of all. Toph never needed anyone to lead her anywhere, and yet if she stretched out her hand, he would be the first to take it.


	5. Sea Slug (Mpreg!Sokka)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by PilgrimKitty.

If Sokka had to use two words to describe how Aang had been during his pregnancy, they would have been “disgustingly happy.”

Even as a guy, Aang was the epitome of a perfect expectant Yin: so glowing, so joyous, so positive even when just a whiff of sea prunes sent him running to the bathroom to puke. He nicknamed the growing fetus something new every week, told anyone who would listen about his and his bondmates’ plans for the child, and drove Sokka to wonder at every waking moment of the day …

WHY COULDN’T HIS BE LIKE THAT?

Sokka woke up in the morning tired no matter how long he slept, ached no matter how long he stretched, and forget sea prunes, he could barely get down anything. Meat, bread, sweets, even lettuce — it all went down one way and was back hours later.

“You just need to take better care of yourself,” Katara insisted as she bent some water along his lower back one day when he was visiting their home in Republic City.

Sokka rolled his eyes. “I do everything you say and I still feel awful.”

“You don’t do it that well,” Katara said, in that frustrating way which wasn’t exactly mean but didn’t show much sympathy for his feelings in his estimation.

To think that he had once imagined pregnancy would be a relief. He’d grown to enjoy mating plenty, and Suki was the most amazing Yang in the world, but heats were still a pain — figuratively as well as literally. And when he started taking charge of the day-to-day operations of the city through the council, having to skip out on work for them was a drag.

Now he actually missed the heats. He hadn’t known how lucky he’d been to at least feel normal for most of the month.

Then there was the clothes issue. Aang had no problems walking around in robes, but traditional Water Tribe men clothes weren’t built for pregnancy, and the new, tighter-to-the-body Republic City styles were even more unforgiving. Sokka had probably taken three trips to the tailor — a bent old Water Tribe Yang man with a slow gait and a penchant for dirty jokes — since he started to show.

“Why don’t you get them fixed up so you grow into them?” Toph asked him one day. “Then you wouldn’t have to keep going back."

Sokka sighed. “What do you know about fashion? You’re blind.”

“Well, I can tell that you’re fat and denying it,” Toph snorted.

“I am not fat!” he screamed at her. “I am flush with the sweet joy of growing life, okay?”

Toph was getting better at rolling her eyes.

There was one day, right before a meeting with contractors hired to build the northern bridge, that Sokka hadn’t felt like getting up out of bed. But he knew he had to, forced himself on his feet and into the ostrich-horse drawn carriage that would take him to the temporary council building.

“Are you feeling all right, Councilman?” the driver asked.

“I’ve lived through worse,” Sokka said as he stepped inside.

While an ostrich-horse drawn carriage was better than walking any day, it still wasn’t pleasant. Every jolt in the road seemed to reverberate throughout his aching body. Today it seemed like his stomach was getting the brunt of it. About mid-way to the council building, a spike of pain hit him so hard he doubled over. It hurt enough that it took him a few moments to realize the carriage had actually been riding across a smooth surface.

In that moment, the world melted away. Sokka placed a hand on his distended stomach, and he kept it there long after the carriage came to a stop.

“Councilman Sokka?” the driver asked as he opened the carriage door. “We’re here.”

Sokka looked at the driver as if he’d never seen him before. His steps were light and careful as he descended from the carriage, the little sea slug dancing in his stomach.


	6. Flow Like Water (Tarrlok)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by wrongfun.

(“And how come you smell like a lady?”)

Despite all that he had done, it took some time before Tarrlok grew to hate his father. For so many years he had tried to maintain an affection for the man despite his fear, and after Noatak ran away and Yakone slowly faded into death, Tarrlok’s love had turned to pity. It was years later, after he had left the North Pole and began attending Republic City University, that Tarrlok saw his father for what he was: a Yang brute.

Tarrlok hadn’t fully come of age when his bloodbending training ended. Neither of them turned out to be what Yakone expected: the cold waterbending prodigy an in-between with an especially light scent that even the weakest perfume could cover, his sniveling and weak little brother a Yang. In a simpler time, Tarrlok probably could have tapped into the natural aggression, the natural instinct to rule, to reach success.

But things had changed. Fire Lord Zuko - a Yang - may have had a hand in the creation of the United Republic, but it was the late Avatar Aang - a Yin - whose fingerprints marked the new nation. While far from a peaceful utopia, the old order had been shaken. Yins like Councilman Sokka now sat on Republic City’s council, and the old ways of aggression and dominance were over.

Well, not quite over, but, like water, they could easily flow into a different form.

He started wearing perfume after he left the police force. Those who knew him before mocked him for it, but he found that people responded to him differently. Common knowledge said that Yins and Yangs could never truly be friends, but Tarrlok sometimes found it was harder to deal with Yangs, that it was in their natures to be territorial and thus suspicious of one another. A neutral scent meant others did not see him as a threat. His impeccable dress and unfailing politeness made him seem educated, refined, someone who wasn’t a brute.

“A wolf in a silk suit is still a wolf, ” Tarrlok heard Officer Lin Bei Fong saying to Tenzin back in the days when he still smelled like her. Tarrlok responded by greeting them with a loud voice and a wide, cold smile.

He did credit Lin with Tenzin’s annoying apathy toward him. Lin was typical of Yangs — stubborn as a bull and as warm as an ice floe. Tarrlok had hoped he could win the airbending master over in the days when his relationship with Lin had ended and he was preparing to inherit the air seat (well, technically there was an election, but who would oppose him?). But Tenzin turned out to be a true in-between in spirit, thought Tarrlok ambitious and selfish because Tarrlok wanted dynamically change things instead of maintain the status quo with slight improvements.

In times of peace, such policies were frustrating, but the rise of the Equalits brought their differences into sharper relief. It would have been nice to just deal with Tenzin like a Yang, more than once he’d dreamed of bloodbending him, but with the others on his side, Tarrlok didn’t need to.

Until the new Avatar came to Republic City, changed the game.

(“You always say bloodbending is the most powerful thing in the world, but it isn’t. The Avatar is.”)

Tarrlok had power beyond what his father had instilled in him, of this he was sure. A few days after Korra arrived, Tarrlok entered the dining hall at Air Temple Island and prepared for the next greatest test of his life.


	7. Take Me (Korra/Bolin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by fixitpixie.

Bolin didn’t really remember his parents — at least not the way Mako did, carrying the memory in tenseness of his shoulders and the crease of his brow as if it were a physical weight — but he remembered his mother's touch. She was a Yang, stocky and muscular like the young man Bolin would grow up to be, and when Bolin thought of her he remembered her strong arms around him, remembered the safety that came with it.

But as he grew up, as his first heats took hold of him, Yangs no longer represented comfort and safety.

Bolin was (if he did say so himself), pretty darn good-looking. Yangs told him he smelled nice, said it under their breaths with a leer in their voice as he passed by in triad territory. Sometimes he’d yell at them to watch their mouths, and other times Mako would do it, a warning in his voice like he was ready to fight.

But on more than one occasion they touched him or slammed him against the wall. They never got further than that. Bolin knew how to fight, and had knocked a few would-be “suitors” over the head with bricks from some wall or street. But before he went to sleep at night, he would try to dream of the possibility of finding a strong but gentle and respectful Yang, and would feel nothing but exhaustion and disappointment.

Bolin had caught just a hint of Korra’s scent when he saw her on the other side of the gym, and, what could he say? Hope springs eternal.

When she lifted him up by the shirtfront after the game, looked in his eyes and told him that the game they played was amazing, Bolin’s heart pounded in his chest. Yet it was probably in the wee hours of the morning, as they practiced earthbending long after Mako had gone to bed, that Bolin had started to get the sense of that distant but long-remembered feeling with Korra. She was strong and powerful, but in her smile, in her bright blue eyes, there was nothing that saw him as a toy to be used, there was nothing that was cruel.

“Look, it just isn’t smart to date a teammate, especially during the tournament. And we can’t afford a baby,” Mako said when Bolin had asked about Korra a few weeks later. “Keep your head out of the clouds and your priorities straight, okay?”

“Who said anything about having a baby?” Bolin asked. He frowned as Pabu tried to escape from the bowl in front of him. “I’m just going to ask her out.”

“You let your imagination run away with you,” Mako said, turning back to the food he was cooking. “I don’t want you to do something you regret.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, gah,” Bolin held up Pabu underneath his arms. “You know what I’m talking about, Pabu. I’m talking about real love.”

Bolin ended up asking her out, anyway. He could hardly believe it when she said no, not because she refused but because she said she didn’t feel dateable. Every other Yang he knew had been all bravado and ego.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “You’re the smartest, funniest, toughest, buffest, talentedest, incrediblest Yang girl in the world!”

She actually blushed. How could he ever be so lucky?

Even with that confrontation with Tahno their date felt like some sort of fairytale. Yin boy from the mean streets of Republic City finds a mysterious Yang girl. She’s kind, she’s strong and then she’s the Avatar. Forget being hit by a girl on a moped with a lot of money. How could it be more perfect?

Yet as Bolin walked with Korra to the docks, prepared to say good-bye to her for the night, that old worry came back. He wasn’t anywhere near his heat, but he still flinched when Korra laid a hand on his shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Bolin said, feeling his face flush. “I just hoped you liked tonight, you know?”

“Of course I did,” Korra said. She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her lips against his cheek.

Bolin suddenly found it hard to breathe. He knew she was strong, but to feel it like this, to have her scent in his nose. What was his name again?

“Take me,” he whispered.

Korra let him go, tilted her head and blinked. “What?”

Bolin shook his head, laughed. “Nothing. I … You’re amazing.”

She smiled that wonderful smile. “You’re great, too.”

He watched her as she hiked herself up on Naga’s back, wishing for all the world he could follow her, that he could do whatever she wanted forever. But as he walked back to the arena, all he felt was happy.

Maybe this was moving too fast, but it couldn’t hurt to ask, could it? He bought her some flowers the next day, and prepared to tell her how he felt.


	8. Surrender (Korra/Mako)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by spiral.

Mako wouldn’t describe himself as given to self-doubt. Maybe in the past, in the wretched days of his puberty, but these days he knew who he was. Mako liked things done correctly and right, liked being in control, and didn’t care if people disliked him because of it. He’d spent the early years of his life being called a wicked firebender, a dirty street rat or a disgusting pervert. (“Talks like a Yang but stinks like a Yin,” Tahno had once said.) He could take being called a jerk.

And yet, with Korra, everything felt out of his hands.

(“I’ll ask you one more time.” Mako knocked the Equalist against the wall as his fist burst into flame. “Where is she?”)

Sitting on Oogi’s back with the others, it wasn’t that the rage, the fear that had prompted what he’d done — that had clouded and caged his mind ever since Korra disappeared — had lessened. But the voice in his head that asked him just what he was doing, just what he was really feeling, was harder to ignore.

(“She’s great. But I think it makes more sense for me to go for another in-between like Asami.”)

Asami was sitting next to him now, holding one of his hands in hers. Occasionally she would squeeze it, and he told himself he should be squeezing it back, he should look into her eyes and assure her that everything would be okay.

(Mako had a wonky sense of smell, always had, but most of the crazy fangirls — and the occasional crazy fanboy — who attached themselves to Bolin tended to be Yangs. When Korra held out her hand, he caught a whiff of her scent and wanted nothing more than for her to go away.)

Mako liked her now, of course, but as a friend. Korra was amazing: strong, brave, smarter than he gave her credit for and always willing to do the right thing. But Asami was rich and beautiful, generous and kind. And they could meet each other as equals always, would never play those fights for superiority out in the city’s underbelly that left Yins in the thrall of Yangs, that chewed up and spit out perverts like him.

(In the days after Korra kissed him, Mako sometimes felt a sick feeling in his stomach. At first he thought it was the guilt but he realized it was fear, because after the initial shock it had been so easy to kiss her back, to allow himself to be bent to her will. He tried his best to put what had happened behind him, to concentrate on loving Asami. And yet the question would worm into the back of his mind.

Do you really think Korra would hurt you?)

Mako’s ears perked up when he heard Naga’s howl. When he told the others, Tenzin guided Oogi to the ground. Tenzin and Lin had gotten off the beast before him, were asking Korra a bunch of questions Mako just couldn’t care about because Korra was here and Korra was safe and he just wanted Korra in his arms.

“I was so worried,” he said, and maybe it was ridiculous that he was carrying her, a Yang, the Avatar, to the sky bison’s back, but he had his instinct to protect as well. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Korra whispered, rested her head against his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Mako laid her on the bison’s saddle, brushed the hair out of her face and told her she was safe. He stayed by her side throughout the ride to the Temple, and when they let him Mako sat by her bed, watched her as she slept. It felt wrong, almost painful to see her like this, but he supposed even the strongest Yangs had moments of weakness, needed Yins for comfort. Could Korra really need him? He didn’t know, but at this moment not even the spirits could induce him to leave. His heart held him there like a hook chained to her sleeping hands.

(“You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about being with a Yang, though,” she’d said, an infuriatingly cocky smile on her face. “Admit it, you like me.”)

Surrender wasn’t always something that happened all at once, was sometimes the water wearing away at the dam until it gave way at last. There may have been a voice inside him, an insistence that this wasn’t who he was. Passion was for Yangs and Yins. The in-betweens were the sensible ones, the ones who kept their heads in times of crisis, the space between brute force and submission, cool under fire. Don’t fall for a Yin, they’ll leave you. Don’t fall for a Yang, they’ll destroy you.

Maybe, Mako thought, that had already happened.


End file.
